By: Sara Bertoncelj / Nova24tv
In his address to the international conference, Prime Minister Janez Janša pointed out that he was particularly concerned that among those who portrayed the totalitarian regime as something good, there were also many young people who had gone through the Slovenian school system in recent decades, and where a strategic mistake was made in education, which, of course, was not accidental. He emphasised that Slovenia was witnessing mass denial, especially of the consequences and the very nature of the communist regime. We have three parties in parliament whose most prominent representatives portray this regime as something that was not a bad thing – one of them, of course, also responded to the Prime Minister’s words and tried to insinuate and divert attention to neo-Nazis or yellow jackets. This is former Minister of Education Jernej Pikalo.
“Obviously a strategic mistake was made in education, which of course was not accidental,” said Prime Minister Janez Janša, adding that he was particularly concerned that among those who portrayed the totalitarian regime as something good, there were also young people who have gone through the Slovenian school system in recent decades. “Culture and education, will be our revenge. This was a well-known saying of the Communists. Considering that we did not carry out lustration in the school system either, the result is expected,” reminded an active user of social network.
Of course, the former school minister, Dr Jernej Pikalo, could not stay quiet and took the opportunity and tweeted: “It is nice that the Prime Minister admits that yellow jackets, right wing extremists and other neo-Nazis are a mistake in the education system. In the next term, following the example of Germany, we will add even more content to the curriculum about the dangers of far-right movements.” Well, we all know very well that our school system does not glorify the totalitarian ideology that Pikalo aimed at, so we cannot claim that right wing extremists are the result or a mistake of the education system. In addition, with his attempt, Pikalo revealed tendencies towards additional control or abuse of the school system, which has been affected in one way or another since 1945. The former school minister comes from the ranks of the Social Democrats, who are the proud successors of the League of Communists. But as we know, the SD and its related parties also have double standards when it comes to totalitarianisms – while, at least for the time being, they criticise Nazism, they find the idealisation of communism quite natural – which they obviously pass on to future generations through the education system.
“In Slovenia, however, we are witnessing mass denial, especially of the consequences and the very nature of the communist regime. We have three parties in parliament whose most prominent representatives portray this regime as something that was not a bad thing. One of these parties presents this regime as a comparative model of how the country should develop in the future,” said Prime Minister Janez Janša at the international conference entitled Virtual Reconciliation: Transition Processes in Central and Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective, which took place in memory of the victims of totalitarian regimes.
The proud successors of the League of Communists will remain in the SD until the last
The Prime Minister concluded his address with concern, given that in the relationship between European factors to totalitarian, criminal regimes, we have recently observed a fairly similar approach to what we could observe in some period of 30 years before Nazism in Germany. When it was said that it was necessary to talk to Hitler, that it was better to have a hundred years of negotiations than one day of war, and therefore the West did not actually react until it was directly threatened itself. “If we were to make a grammatical comparison, we would find similar sentences today, when some talk about the Iranian regime and when, after the last elections, people came to power who committed genocide against their own people at a time when freedom was being born in Europe. A few more such regimes could be listed in the neighbourhood,” Janša said.
On the occasion of today’s European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of All Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, the President of the National Assembly Igor Zorčič emphasised that any glorification of Nazism and totalitarian symbols is extremely dangerous and inadmissible, but increasingly common. That is why it should be prosecuted in our country as well, he advocated. “Even worse, in recent times there has been an increasing glorification of historical criminals, their totalitarian ideas and acts of rejection, and on the other hand the strengthening and promotion of intolerance towards those who think differently,” he emphasised, of course, aiming at Nazism, while in the past he was not bothered when certain MPs attended parliamentary sessions in clothes with images of communist revolutionaries and totalitarian symbols, such as the red star. In Pikalo’s SD, however, they still worship the criminal Boris Kidrič.